Play a part in the epic struggle of the Firan people against invading
armies, meddling Gods, and the internal enemies that Fate has pit against
them. Set in the capital city of Anarinuell, characters are a product of a
rich heritage in which a divine wager and an historic marriage plunged the
world into a war that has consumed three generations -- creating heroes,
villains, and victims. Characters also share in common a large and
powerful city of residence; a charismatic leader; and a common enemy. But
Anarinuell is not a city about sameness, and roleplay focuses upon
dramatic interactions among characters from different clans and different
social strata with widely divergent religious and political views.

Firan's coded systems are designed to exploit these differences --
allowing social, economic, and physical combat. Enhance your reputation in
the community by earning social points. Use those social points to spy,
to call upon favors, to supress witnesses against you or to sabotage
another person's reputation. Use your economic skills to negotiate better
prices, or to deplete the city's supply of a given resource -- driving up
the market, or instigating riots and strikes! In physical combat you can
pummel a foe with your fists, or run him through with your sword. You can
even bring your assailant to justice with the legal system. Come be a
part of the myth-making on Firan!

Mud Theme: An original Greco-Roman ancient world setting reminiscent of Xena or Hercules.

It's been five years since the last review for this game. I've been
playing it for the past three of them, on and off. I'm not even
going to bother with following the trend of the old reviews - in the
time I've been playing, I couldn't name a single case of favoritism
or bias. The staff seemed mostly professional to me, and I've never
had a problem with them.

Firan's mechanics are well done, in my opinion. When you join you
have the option of selecting a character from a very large roster or
going through a simple generation of your own. Both of these have
advantages and disadvantages - it might take some getting used to
taking on a character someone else wrote, but it gives you a way to
dive right in to the RP. The custom character generation is a little
limited, having you pick between several options for personality and
such, but I feel like you're given enough leeway once in-game to
play the character you want to play.

There's a very, very heavy emphasis on RP. While there are coded
combat and crafting systems, the only way to advance is through a
moderated voting system - each player gets five votes a week (not
counting random bonuses), and can vote for another player a single
time in that week. At the end, your total votes are converted into
XP. While it sounds like a system easily abused, I've never seen it
happen, and it's watched closely by the staff.

The community is very friendly and welcoming, for the most part. New
players are typically greeted promptly and offered as much help as
they need settling in.

Being a roleplay game, the quality of the world and lore is pretty
important as well. Personally, I think Firan's world is excellently
fleshed out - the efforts of the players over the years have really
forged an interesting story on top of a solid base provided by the
staff.

So for brevity's sake, if you're interested in a solid, heavily
RP-focused game, I'd say you should give Firan a shot. The worst
that can happen is you won't like it.

I always use Mudconnector's reviews to assess the worthiness of
games before I even play on them. Needless to say, despite all the
negative reviews concerning Firan, I threw caution to the wind, went
and applied for a character. Note that I followed the appropriate
format, providing the administration several paragraphs on why I
wanted to play the character and what I had planned for it.

I received my character (a young noble child) without any hesitation
or obstacle. I had never played a young child before, and while I
found the role challenging, I probably have had the most fun in a MU
that I've experienced in a long time.

Then a week later I was approached by a junior wizard and asked to
relinquish my character. Not because I wasn't playing out of theme.
It wasn't because I committed any kind of transgression against the
game. Nothing like that. It was because the administration simply made
a mistake, and that due to the character's secrets, it wasn't meant
for new players. I was told that I was welcome to reapply for another
character, and then take this specific character as an alt. Other
player's compliments were not taken into consideration, let alone the
FIVE XP points that I gained just from playing him for 48 hours.

I declined for reasons I will explain below.
This is quite strange considering that Firan has a system on the
roster which tags a character with notes for potential applicants. Lo
and behold, when I applied, this character had no notes indicating
that he was only for current players.

While I was welcomed to take another character, I did not. This
administration action confirms everything that people on here have
said about Firan. I can only deduce that my character was tagged by a
particular favorite of one of the administration, and was perhaps
coveted. I was simply a casualty in their way. Or perhaps this is
simply a bureaucratic snafu, in which case, Firan needs to get their
bum in gear. With the amount of staff that they have on this game, not
to mention player helpers coming to the right and left of me, they
should have been able to personally assist me within a day or two of
this, apologize profusely, and help me choose a more appropriate
character.

Firan is a great game. Creative. Imaginative. And with a great bunch
of players. Just a horrible administration.

I agree with you on the fact of the administration. It's hard not to
play favorites anymore. I have seen Staff on many mushes snub a good
RPer who brings alot to the table, in favor of a friend.

When I played on firan, it seamed that what I wanted to do with my
characters, even keeping strictly to the theme and @sheet, wasnt
going to happon.

Firan in a way, is their sandbox, and they do what they want.
Sadly, people who play there like it that way. They are good
technical staff, but I would cringe at anyone who would call
themselves an HR professional.

Review posted by Lasha

Posted on Wed Sep 6 00:20:13 2006 / 0 comments

Display Review

Man, am I glad that i'm not the only one who has problems with this
game. I played it for a little while, and while at first the staff are
newbie friendly, they don't seem interested beyond that. For
instance, say you pick one of the rostered characters. Sound's fine,
right? Well, if you don't end up liking the character, guess what,
you're SOL. They're alt policy restricts you to playing that until
you get nominated for enough XP to get an alt. That's right, you need
XP to get -alts-. Now, they have a chargen system, and that's a bit
better, but you only get one more try with this one. Then the same
thing. The staff don't care that you can't get into your character,
and instead laud the perfections of their system. Even worse, there's
no delete command for a custom made character, leaving you no options.

Well, i've got some advice for the staffers there. Be more newbie
friendly beyond first character. Your theme is complex and can take
alot of getting used to and therefore might take players a few tries
to find a character they like to play. Good system, bad way of running
it. Sadly, you guys have just become another RPG that falls into this
category.

Maybe I didn't play long enough to check, but I had a pretty
terrible experience with Firan. Figuring that everyone who'd gone
'oh look it's staff favoritism city' might in fact be wrong, I
think 'hey, let's try it out'. You know. I never got into a single
scene, primarily because I was rather disgusted with it within 30
minutes.

When you choose from a list of pregenned characters (Which they
prefer you do,) you're given a general rundown of their personality.
This is fully reasonable. You look through their umpteen billion
chars, choose one that suits you. I'm rather impressed with the work
done to produce them. (The char I chose had...80k of relationship
backhistory, and he was a priest.)

Upon chargenning, I discovered @sheet/secrets. This is, of course,
the command that shows you your character's secrets to the world. I
figured it was reasonable enough that every character would have
these.

And I still do! However, they don't warn you exactly how serious
these secrets are. I chose a character who was generally outlined as
'pleasant overzealous-priest type fellow who has a heart of gold,
really.' My secrets...talked about his sadistic nature, and how he
liked to whip pagans in a very BDSM-like style, and how he had--get
this, abused his little sister for daring to marry a pagan priest. And
how guilty he felt about it, and how terrible he felt about it.

Oh, and he'd apparently secretly slept with almost /every single
whore in the game/. It was unbelievable.

So, naturally, I rather felt like a fellow who'd driven a car off
the lot only to find out that the salesman had swapped cars while I
was signing the contract. So I complained. What did a /wizard/ tell
me?

That it wasn't their fault I'd chosen that sort of character, and
how dare I talk about my IC secrets OOCly, and that if I continued in
this manner there would be repercussions.

Because I wanted to play a fairly pleasant, if overzealous, priest,
and was handed a sadistic abusive whoremonger.

I'm afraid that I too, have to agree with Banjooie's criticisms.
While secrets are often the very stuff which drives potential tiny
plots, they quite frequently contrast the personality descriptions of
most characters on Firan. Furthermore, with their IC/OOC discussion
policies as stringent as they are, not to mention the draconian
attitudes of their admins, it makes rectifying a situation like this
almost impossible. To put in bluntly, the administration doesn’t give
a toot whether or not the unsuspecting player feels uncomfortable
playing a certain character. After all, it isn’t their fault you can’t
read the secrets initially.

Also, Banjooie’s concern regarding the clandestine sexual
proclivities of his chosen character is a common theme on Firan.
Sexuality, whoring, fornication, and wanton behavior are all quite
rampant on this game. After playing there over the years, I saw the
game turn from something vaguely reminiscent of a PG-13 experience to
something resembling else...

Another case which caused me to be concerned was staff’s deduction of
social points on male members of the nobility who “…didn’t frequent
brothels regularly enough.” Sexuality is taken so far that most of the
main characters on Firan are known for voracious sexual appetites. The
positive (XP rewards) and negative (XP loss) incentives given roleplay
scenes of a sexual nature only left me wondering why they take
their “no privacy policy” seriously. Could there be cybervoyeurs in
the midst of the FiranMUX administration?

As Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” states, “promiscuity is every
citizen’s duty.”

But I digress. Banjooie, I’m sorry that your experience with Firan
was a bad one and hopefully this doesn’t leave you completely
disenchanted with roleplaying altogether. Maybe Firan will change its
tune when it finds its playerbase dwindling, and the negative
comments on Mudconnector numerous. On the surface Firan might look
like a good game, but on the inside it is lacking. I often compare it
to being invited to a sumptuous banquet, only to walk in and discover
there really is no banquet at all.

Comment posted on Sun Aug 13 01:16:52 2006 by Terris:

Okay, really, I just want to say: I'm glad I'm not the only one.

The @sheet/secrets thing didn't bother me so much, but, despite
the larger playerbase, this MUX is FULL of favoritism. Some people
are given free reign to do whatever they want, and others can't do a
damn thing without jumping through 9,000,000 hoops. And if you don't
play your character -just- how they say you should, you lose it.

Some people like it. I didn't. Like I said, glad it wasn't just me.

Review posted by Isis

Posted on Sun Aug 14 21:48:43 2005 / 1 comment

Display Review

Though I find some of the comments here about Firan to be valid, I
would like to counter that I think that Firan is the best Roleplaying
Game I have come across. There is no need to go around killing things
and there is just laid back RP. I love the roster system and I have
noticed that staff has started to address the fact that their
characters are getting outdated.

I do think that there is a large playerbase on the staff that get
'special treatment', I am not worried about that kind of thing, when
I can make my own plots and my own fun. I think that if you are a good
player, you can make your own fun, and not rely on a riot or air raid
everyday that has to be staffed.

I don't know what I think about all the comments from people who
have been playing for several years. I have been playing Firan for
almost 2 years and I have nothing to complain about. I think that its
a game that should be commended. The staff and players are wonderful,
kind, and should be praised for the things that they do.

The staff on Firan take times out of their lives to volunteer to give
you as 'timely' a response as they can. I think the main problem
people have is that no one has a RL and they rely on staff to give
them a life, forgetting that some people /do/ have lives.

I just wonder if someone who is complaining about the game has
thought of all the time and effort that the creators and staff have
taken to keep a game for your 'entertainment' open for free and
without question. I don't think that living room policy is that bad,
seeing as they are the creators and until you have your own game, you
can't make those rules. Who wants someone to come in and mess up
their game ideas, or insult their generosity of letting you play
there?

I also have to wonder, if there are so many upset and complaining
about the game, calling it stale and bland, why are they still
playing? Why are they still around? Addiction. Because the game is
that good. Because the staff has tried their best to make it a fun and
interesting game. If you were that displeased with the game, then you
would find somewhere better to play.

I mean I know I would. I have nothing but praise and good things to
say about the game and their staff. I thank the staff for allowing me
to have a laid back fun experience. Because that's what Firan is, a
game, a fair and interesting game. And with any game comes things that
might need to be improved, but I think staff is very good about
listening to player suggestions. Ex. Ikonboard. Also, I think they
take the time out to fix things that look to be wrong. Ex. Recent
Bonus' that were discussed in Ikonboard.

It amazes me to see such bad reviews for Firan, when in reality, the
game is awesome, and I would recommend the addiction to anyone looking
for a reality based, fun game.

Dear Isis,
While I agree with many of your comments, I cannot say that the
correlation between the staffs' diligence these past several years
and the intention to provide quality to the players is validated in
your claim.

I agree that Firan is a fun place to roleplay, and that the story is
very addictive. The reason I stayed so long before leaving was because
I fell in love with the theme.

To correct myself, it used to be a fun place, and many people who
have left the game share my sentiment.

You also made the comment that those who claim that the game is stale
and bland still play there because of an addiction. This might be
true, but not in all cases. Many people stay on the game because their
friends play there, and I know several individuals who come on
regularly just to socialize or roleplay with friends, only
periodically throughout the week or month to keep their characters
from going idle and back on the roster.

You also have people like myself who have found a world of
roleplaying beyond Firan. I no longer play there, so your statement
doesn't really have weight in this case. Also, I would ask you to
take into account the flux of the roster. Firan is a revolving door.
People go in, people come out.

It is in my opinion that the game is in effect a stage run by the
staff - they are the directors, you are the players. To put it
bluntly, it is in my opinion that Firan has survived this long mostly
due to the amount of control the Head Wizard and Wizardess get
managing plots and weaving the story. The website says that the game
was partially inspired by the Sid Meier game 'Civilization'. Well,
in Civilization you basically play a god who manages a
country/society. This is exactly what they are doing by manipulating
plot to their fancy in minute detail.

The old addage, 'power is the greatest aphrodisiac' rings a bell in
this sense.

Furthermore, it appears the majority, if not all the wizards on Firan
are wrapped up in their own positions of power and are not willing to
take charge of their own PCs (who are normally the most influencial
characters on the game). There is a definite feel of favortism amongst
the staff which I felt hamstringed RP for those who were not privy to
special plots or instrumental scenes. I feel this caused a feeling of
unimportance, causing people to become bored and eventually idle out.
After many years of this I felt as if I were at a country club; I
could walk on the grounds, but I couldn't sip mint juleps while
playing golf with the big boys.

But I digress. It should amaze you that there are so many disgruntled
Firan-players out there. It probably says something about the game's
quality and the maladies which need to be addressed by the game's
staff.

You are more than welcome to your opinions and I encourage them. But
the years of exceedingly harsh direction and the monotony in the plots
with the same old characters got tedious for me. I and many others
found greener pastures to graze in.

Review posted by TwilightMan

Posted on Sat Jul 2 20:19:22 2005 / 0 comments

Display Review

Firan at one time was a wonderful and exciting game that I would have
encouraged everyone I knew to come and check out. The players were
great, the staff was unbelievable and the plot was stunning. Over the
past two years or so though that has begun to change and more often
than not, you are dealing with constant angst, problematic plots and a
very, very slow response from the staff.

I blame most of this on staff burnout which the game owners have
failed to address. It's no surprise when you're dealing with 150-200
individual players a week that you would burnout over time, but the
players should not be punished for that burnout. However, right now
they are being punished for it. For example, a time sensitive plot may
require a response from a wizard but due to them all feeling burned
out it does not happen in a timely fashion and your character or
someone else's character is killed/hurt/punished for something that
may have been preventable had you received an answer to your question.

Their own ingame statistics ,which they publish, confirm it and show
that the average response time to answer @requests (their question
system) has grown from 2.5 days to over 5 days since January. On a
game that relies heavily upon staff intervention due to the depth of
the theme, its almost impossible to survive without timely responses.

The problem with this is that they're never too burned out to work
when they feel like running a plot to have an invasion happen or have
some building burn to the ground. It's very selective burnout.

Another major problem is the fact that they definitely gear the game
toward the success of staff played characters or characters played by
friends of people on the staff, which I suppose is their right to do
as they're running the game; it's just disappointing for those not
within their inner circle. I doubt this will ever be addressed and I
believe most people just cope with it now. For some people these
things may not be a big deal and that is fine, for others they
definitely take away from the overall enjoyment of the game.

I actually concur with the prev2ious synopsis of this game. I found
Firan at the beginning to be a rather refreshing roleplaying
experience, and its Greco-Roman atmosphere was something that I
enjoyed.

However, over the years I began to notice the flavor of the game to
degrade in the sake of pleasing favored characters and adjusting plots
to suit the staffs’ fancies. I too also became concerned with the
growing staff base which rose from the pool of players, which I
believe simply stifles roleplay, not to mention is a sign of
inefficiency and unfairness (In fact, there is a joke that I made
amongst my friends that it took Jesus Christ a resurrection and an
ascension to sit at the right hand of the Father; however, on Firan
you just need to talk to the right person).

The game boasts with pride that most vigilant of roleplaying axioms,
“In Character Actions Equate In Character Consequences,” but many
actions are involved through out-of-character whims, most specifically
the latest decision to toll members of the common and middle castes
when entering the city center proper. Not only has this decision
caused many commoners hardship in not being able to go to the market
to trade their goods, but it blocks roleplay in the Forum, which
specifically if I have read the newsfiles correctly that an excuse to
go to the Forum was to promote roleplay.

Monitoring as well as conducting tallies on sexual activity, not to
mention Chief Wizard and Wizardess’ ‘living room’ philosophy after a
few years was a bit draconian in my tastes. Certainly one does not
need to fall in love with the creators in order to fall in love with
the theme. The view in this case is that this is their game, so
therefore the plot and outline within the history of the Firan Peoples
must go according to this plan. In other words, players are merely
characters in the Admin's ballet, so when the Admin says
pirouette...you'd better pirouette.
Political figures or commoners not fitting this 'dream' can find
themselves locked up in the Republic Jail, exiled, stocked, or even
executed by simply a few keystrokes to set out a TP.

In closing, I find that the game has swallowed the last of the summer
wine-a once fine sports car which has been abused and banged to
blandness.

FiranMUX does some things very, very well. There are some problems,
however, and some key differences in philosophy from most MU*. Players
interested in joining the game would do well to understand just what
they are getting into.

On the positive side, Firan is 'newbie-friendly'. They even won an
award certifying this. The reasons behind this are probably threefold:
First, the helpfiles. Firan's news and helpfiles are the most
complete and thorough documentation I have ever seen on any game.
Secondly, the game maintains a large staff of wizards and player
helpers who constantly man the Help Channel and provide friendly
answers to just about any possible question (usually by referring the
questioner to the already-written helpfile on the topic.) Finally, it
is easy to 'jump in feet first' in the game because all characters
are pre-generated with detailed backgrounds, statistics, character
secrets, and most importantly, a set of relationships to other
characters which provide hooks for future roleplay. The many coded
systems can be a challenge for a newcomer, but with patience and the
helpful assistance of players and staff, most can be learned as-you-go
without difficulty.

Countering these positives are a series of systemic problems. Most
obviously, the many coded systems are flawed and do not serve their
apparent intent. The intent must in many cases be arbitrarily imposed
by the staff. For example, the listing page advertises 'social,
economic, and physical combat.' The social combat system is one of
the most laughable. Coded systems of gaining and losing points are
trivial in amount compared to the massive social 'hits' and
'gains' imposed by staff. It is easily observed that the best way
for a character to 'climb the social ladder' is to not have a
player. Characters on the roster make no mistakes, and thus do much
better in a system where mistakes are penalized much more often and
more heavily than good behavior is rewarded. Perhaps the most glaring
proof the system is flawed is that periodically staff will go through
and arbitrarily assign social 'hits' to people who have simply
accrued too many points, calling them 'social climbers'. It seems
useless to have a competitive system which rewards success by putting
you back where you started. While the reasoning for this (to keep the
middle class below the nobility) seems reasonable, the reasoning also
negates the need for the system at all.

This same arbitrariness is found in the game's economic system. The
advertisement to 'use your economic skills to ... deplete the city's
supply of a given resource -- driving up the market, or instigating
riots and strikes!' is not really possible. Food riots are sparked
primarily by OOC player inactivity and neglect, rather than anyone's
IC use of coded economic skills. Additionally, the most efficient way
to 'make' money in the game is via an OOC means: logging on at least
once every 6 hours to have your character sleep and nap, storing up
'energy reserve' points which can then be sold completely
independent of the game's market. Again, the staff has on at least
two recent occasions arbitrarily taken money from commoners and handed
it out to the nobility (once completely arbitrarily and on another
occasion citing 'building repairs'). Other arbitrary economic
changes keep trying and failing to fix the system, such as making gems
ten times as valuable overnight, adding 'tolls' for commoners which
do little economically but suppress gathering in central locations for
roleplay, and deciding that there's an iron shortage which can only
really be enforced by arbitrary external rules, not code.

Physical combat is driven by character statistics, and has many
flaws. One key problem is that players are allowed to raise their (IC)
skills by accumulating (OOC-earned) experience points. Characters who
have had active players thus have better skills than characters who
are on the roster. While this seems a nice way to reward longevity
with players, it unbalances the combat system. Another key problem in
the combat system is that while many aspects of combat (hit/miss/how
hard) are determined by character stats and a roll of the dice, combat
is regulated by timers which are entirely deterministic. If your
character's stats aren't as good as the other character's, he will
always fight faster than you and can easily take advantage of the
engaging/disengaging rules to prev2ent you from ever landing a hit.

In addition to the problems outlined with the coded systems, Firan is
showing signs of 'age'. While at its inception, with a small
playerbase, small roster of characters, and fresh plots, secrets, and
active 'heroes' who drove the initial storyline, it was no doubt an
outstanding game. Through no fault of the staff, a major event
occurred in January 2003 where a player (through cheating) essentially
incited a massive civil war and caused the common enemy to invade and
essentially ended the story. Staff was faced with several bad choices
in trying to recover the game, ultimately choosing to make much of the
event a 'dream from the gods' and to advance the timescale to try to
get the next generation in power. Unfortunately, this still left much
of the damage from the dream event, such as the outing of many of the
key characters' secret plots and intrigues, and the game has never
recovered.

Also part of the 'age' problem is the large roster of characters,
which easily grow out of date. While the staff makes an effort to keep
these updated, there are simply too many to possibly keep up with, and
these out-of-date characters present a challenge to new players, who
rarely stick around to play them consistently. Active players with
relationships to these characters must constantly make excuses for why
they're not around. Inevitably, the 'honeymoon' period for a new
character ends with some of the characters' closest relationships
going back on the roster and never being consistently played again,
leading to frustration. While in many cases a character 'abandoned'
by most of their family would likely go with them, the practice of
'alt-hopping' is strongly frowned upon, and thus players are
pressured to 'stick it out' with situations greatly lacking in
potential.

Another problem of the game's age is the constantly expanding staff.
Most of the best players end up joining the staff, which results in
them being so overwhelmed by their staff duties that their characters,
usually some of the most important feature roles on the game, become
very inactive. To the staff's credit, they do spend some time trying
to run plots and generate roleplay, but are more frequently
overwhelmed by simply trying to monitor, some might feel, too closely.

Monitoring is one policy point where Firan differs greatly from
almost every other MU* I have played: there is no expectation of
privacy. Staff can, and does, spy on roleplay, allegedly to reward
excellent roleplay or keep tabs on running plots. Almost everything
done in the game is logged in some manner somewhere, including a staff
bulletin board which records every time two characters have carnal
relations.

Another key policy point players ought to be willing to abide by is
the chief wizardess' 'living room' philosophy. She treats the
online game as an extension of the tabletop game originally started in
her living room, and players are guests there. It is poor manners to
complain about your hostess, even if you walk outside to do it, and
you can be banned from the game for public or private criticism of the
staff. Even by posting this somewhat negative review here, I fear such
a reprisal. But just as if I had people in my living room I'd
probably have different standards for my old friends and new guests,
there are varying standards on the game for these categories of
people. There is most definitely a clique of players (staff and those
few privy to the staff gossip) and those who are forever on the
outside (usually the subject of the staff gossip, where negative
opinions are constantly reinforced leaving little room for change).
Just don't try to point that out in any forum where it can be
attributed to your name.

A final policy point stemming from the living room philosophy is that
of fairness to repeat victims of harassment. In any individual
situation, staff strives to act fairly, but this is sometimes
difficult in a 'he said/she said' situation. Most disturbing, staff
has actually posted a policy where a player can be penalized for
'taking too much staff time.' Even if you have done nothing wrong,
but have been wronged by a clique of several other players picking on
you, making complaints about each of them puts you at risk of
overusing scarce staff resources and receiving a punishment. Sometimes
a player doesn't even need to actually do anything at all, but if
their name comes up in an argument between two other players, it can
count against them. As with complaints about staff, sometimes it's
best to keep your mouth shut and endure the inequity.

In summary, Firan is a large game that's easy to step into (if you
don't happen to get a stale character), has many excellent
roleplayers (if they're not too busy staffing), and has many coded
systems (that you can pretend are balanced) to try to enhance the
realism. If you are willing to give up your roleplaying privacy, your
ability to complain, and don't mind the occasional arbitrary staff
decisions, you might enjoy it. Personally, I would caution against
getting too involved in an aging game which has lost its lustre and
simply outgrown and outlived the days of its prime.

What can I say? Except every, and I mean EVERY, aspect of that review
is dead-on to my experience with Firan. I have been on Firan off and
on, leaving when my frustration with the place built up too high,
returning because I like the coded aspects. I would emphasize a few
key points in this review. the game is extremely cliquish.

I would also add I have found certain staff members to be outright
unethical. I have talked to multiple players to discover my
experiences have been echoed again and again. What takes place on this
game only makes sense to you if you've been there for at least three
or four years straight. They operate on a different kind of logic.
There are things I like about Firan, but I have found, in all, the bad
far outweighs the good. There are other games out there that have the
same remarkable mixture of code and rp, with roster systems (which is
a remarkable thing, truly) and I encourage any player to look to these
alternatives for their rp.

Review posted by Elizabetta

Posted on Fri Sep 26 21:49:44 2003 / 0 comments

Display Review

I have played on Firan for well over two years. While its coded
systems can only be described as awesome that is about the best
the game has to offer. I have had none, to very few, interesting
plot scenes. Plot and adventures are reserved for their feature
characters which leaves everyone else lacking in the fun department.

The majority of the players are considerate and nice which makes
acclimating to a game of this type easy. If you are used to games
where there is mostly a steady increase to your characters life,
don't consider playing on Firan. The class system makes IC life
very prejudiced and this seems to carry over OOCly as well, where
staff are related. While at times the staff are friendly and helpful,
there appears to be extreme favoritism as well. They will tell one
player that things in the game do not move quickly yet they are all
too quick to move 'favored' characters into position to the point
of ignoring their own rulings. The game sports a very large staff,
so large in fact that one is often juggled between them in the search
for answers. Their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is
doing. Half the characters on their roster are so horribly out of date
that they are not worth playing. And the chances of getting definite,
clear and concise help from staff in updating such a character is nil.
Their thinking is that they are doing a player a 'service' by letting
them write back history, which it would be if they did not constantly
deny write ups that fit theme. With their roster system, it is the
staff's job to keep characters updated, not the players. Their staff
is largely under the idea that their interpretation of a character is
the only one that is right and unwilling to discuss anything outside
of their thoughts.

Overall, I have mixed thoughts on the game at large. Loving one part
of it but finding a lot of room for improvement.